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Darling in the FranXX. An original anime made by three established studios, very well-known for delivering great quality shows (at the time of writing). A classic premise of fighting beasts in robots after a major cataclysmic event. A girl that went down in history as one of the most popular waifus out there. But a near-7 score? What gives? Let's try to understand what made people of 2018 so critical of this anime.

I'll try to stick to the following sequence of aspects: first we'll jog through basic aspects of an anime (visuals, characters/voice acting, music, story/pacing), then we'll quickly address the elephant in the room ... (Evangelion), after which I'm going to give a brief personal opinion on the whole series and wrap up the review with a conclusion.
There might be spoilers in the "my personal opinion" part, but everywhere else I tried hard to be abstract or not touch any specific topics at all.

Visuals.
If you know anything about Studio Trigger, A1 Pictures and CloverWorks, you'd have a basic idea of what to expect from Darling in the FranXX. Kill la Kill, Little Witch Academia, Sword Art Online franchise, AnoHana, Your Lie in April - all very well animated, big titles that came before DitF. CloverWorks was just established when Darling in the FranXX aired, so we can only now retrospectively say that CloverWorks does an awesome job too: Bunny Girl Senpai, Wonder Egg Priority (my personal favorite in terms of visuals), Bocchi the Rock and others.
And the fruit of labor of these animation studios is great, as expected. Backgrounds are beautiful and detailed, animation is smooth and natural, the quality doesn't dip in the fight scenes either. Setting varies heavily, from the sands of the desert to the cozy greenery, conservative interior of the house where characters spend a lot of screen-time at, and to the alien looking structures seen in the latter half of the story. All the locations look very fitting to the context of the corresponding parts of the story. Good job!

Opening visuals are nothing to write home about, they look good, the first opening has a nice red theme going on and it does a great job of setting mood for the show, but the second opening, even though taking the blue part of red-blue accent, seems to be just for the sake of changing the opening after the first 12 episodes. I feel like using space instead of water would correspond to the progression of the story while still keeping the blue theme. All in all, openings are solid, but nothing to write home about.

Endings, however, are a whole different story. Each ending shows a short episode with a specific theme, having a grainy style with a cinematic look. Truly a sight to look forward to. I'll talk more about the endings in the "Music" section, but for now, together with the home-brewed OSTs, the endings are fantastic.

Characters.
Here we have some more characters than usual, the main cast is a whole 10 of them, with the names resembling their number codes: Hiro, Ichigo, Ikuno, Futoshi, Goro, Kokoro, Mitsuru, Miku, Zorome and Zero Two. I would probably add Nana, Hachi and Dr. Werner Frank to that list, since they appear many times throughout the storyline and are involved in several important occurrences, so I will mainly focus on these 13 people.
In general, the characters are not complicated, and they will not change their standing through to the end (mostly). And their simplicity makes sense: the main team are kids that were trained and taught to do one thing only, called "Parasites". They didn't have neither time nor chance to develop into something intricate and obscure. Nana and Hachi are supervising younger "Parasites", they are also not unusual characters. And so is Dr. Werner, although he, Nana and Hachi have something to hide from the rest.
However simple a character may be, if he has a right place and plays his role well, he might be very interesting to watch. And I believe that the production team hit the spot with them. They are simple, naive creatures, experiencing abnormalities after crossing fates with "that one" character, and seeing their straightforward reactions put a smile on my face many times. Same with the sad parts: it's very easy to relate to these characters, because it's easy to understand them.
"That one" character that is not like the others is, of course, the star of the show - Zero Two. From the looks to the behavior and biography, she is the anarchistic soul that breaks the mundane way of life of the "Parasite" squad on Plantation 13. Even if you haven't seen the anime, if you were in the anime community circa 2018-2019, you've seen her many times, and you (most probably) love her. Just like the other kids, she had a rough past, but that past is not what you normally see with a "Parasite". She is different, and she brings that sweet dissonance to the show.
With that many characters, there ought to be something going on between them. And it does! A lot of things. Romantic relationships between kids who have no understanding of it whatsoever look about as cringe and silly to the viewer as one might expect: many dumb actions leading to unnecessary quarrels and arguments. But it's not irritating to watch these clashes, considering who is participating in them. It doesn't feel out of place. Instead, watching them go through these feels akin to watching someone learn something you already know how to do. It's intriguing and somewhat heartwarming.
However, the less pleasant part of romantic relationships is also present here. Some might call it "cucking", and it certainly feels that way, but I think that is a bit exaggerated. Usually one "love triangle" is enough for a show that's main theme is not romance. Here we have a whole two of them! And being among the main team, they are sure to make some people feel something. I myself wasn't feeling comfortable when things were getting spicy, but the end result of these shuffles makes sense (except for my man Futoshi, they did him dirty). I've often seen people mentioning this matter when criticizing Darling in the FranXX, so I guess this is one reason this anime has such a low score?

Now to the voice acting. Don't know much in terms of voice acting, but I have no problem with how it is done in Darling in the FranXX.
Voices are pretty distinct from one another, they fit the characters nicely. Expressions are rich, the voices usually have softer tones, but in tense scenes VAs give us the good old beans. Overall, very pleasant experience, can't put my finger on anything subpar. Bonus points for hearing "Daarin" every now and then (dub enjoyers, you are missing A LOT).

Music.
Finally here, I've been anticipating this part fiercely. The OST of this show is absolutely awesome.

Just like Zero Two herself, "Kiss of Death" by Mika Nakashima, the opening of Darling in the FranXX, was a very popular topic when the anime aired. 6 years later, it's still loved by many and occupies space in minds of those who didn't even watch the show. "Kiss of Death" complements the situation which Hiro found himself in, and if it didn't pull you in in the first half, you might find yourself changing opinion in the second half, with a slightly melancholic part/version of the song. "Kiss of Death" was ranked #2 in opening popularity chart by Crunchyroll for year 2018, only giving the first place to Overlord's "VORACITY". It's also a banger, but even though I can't say I agree with the positions, the majority has decided.
The song has a pretty distinctive vibe to it. It's mainly standing out by Mika Nakashima's low voice, of course. "Low" being one of the ends of the spectrum, it's naturally not as common as medium or high voices. I'm probably biased on this one, since I fancy lower voices among female singers (I'll listen to JUNNA's performance in Macross Delta's Hametsu no Junjou anytime anywhere). But still, the opening did the job right, and my opinion on it doesn't change things much. It's still different from most j-pop openings of many many other shows that came out in the past decade or more.

Endings are also great. First of all, special thanks to every sound director that makes a decision to have OST recorded with the voice actors. It adds immensely to the perception of the show, the feeling that it's not just another product, but a result of artistic work. Studio Shaft loves doing that, the number of songs they recorded with VAs for three seasons of Sayonara, Zetsubo Sensei! alone is mind blowing, and then there are endings of Maria✝Holic and the famous openings of Bakemonogatari. It's really cool. Here we don't have THAT level of personality, but still better than most. Seiyu singing in unison with the simple, chill visuals in the back... I'm almost out of words, so I'll just say it's mesmerizing.

I'm not a fan of talking BGM, so I'll be quick. It works, I almost don't event remember it being there, but after taking a quick look at it, it sets the mood for the scene well. Other times, it's very feint and non-intrusive. Just as intended. So, it's job well done, I guess!

Story and pacing.
The story has a very classic feel to it. A story of love, survival and future outlook. It's pretty simple, having no sudden 180s or entanglements. It gives enough backstory for characters through flashbacks and magically acquired memories of the past, while also feeding us information about current times of the world when some important event is happening. Writers decided to keep symbolism at bay, which I respect. There aren't religious meanings behind names, reasoning for certain occurrences or organizations. Well, except for the dress code of the ruling committee and their head being called "Papa", I guess. And a certain resemblance between Plantations and Noah's Ark. But that's about it.
Drama is prevalent. Kids getting abused and brainwashed, killed, forced to go against their will, love triangles, sacrifices. It's safe to assume that if you're not a drama fan, you might not enjoy this how to the fullest (and may call it "tearjerking" in your review). But if you can savor some romantic drama, you won't be disappointed. Simplicity of the components of the story makes it easy to feel for the characters, same as in, for example, Violet Evergarden. It's pure, old as life, and beautiful. It's something most of us has experienced, and something we can all resonate with. If we disregard everything else, of course.

And that leads me to one of the weaker parts of this anime: the pacing. Ideally, you would want linear pacing, because it's consistent and events get more and more saturated towards the end, but such pacing is not always achieved by the production team. And such is the case with Darling in the FranXX.
Story develops very slowly though the first 15-16 episodes, and after episode 20 it just goes berserk and there's some new major development happening several times per episode. To be fair, they did what they could, and the result is not too bad: the first, slow part of the anime, despite not many developments happening, made a good use of free time by getting the viewer comfortable with the characters and introducing to us fragments of their past, simultaneously presenting the "normal" way of life of Parasites. I think this half is nicely balanced, it's nonchalant and somewhat calm, despite the fact that the job these kids do can take their lives any day.
What adds to the confusion that many people certainly experienced during the last 4 episodes of the show is, I think, a sudden expansion of the scope of the story. All we had to "work" with for the biggest part of the anime is the Plantation 13, a few mechas, a desert and an old monument. And suddenly, the point of interest is in the Solar system? And then it turns out that it's actually in the farthest corners of the space? That's a lot of information for such a short time frame. And you cannot possibly have enough time to explain it properly either. Making piece with such a development is not easy, and most importantly, it could've been avoided if only the producers decided to make it a non-standard 26 or 28 episode series. Those 2-4 episodes could've been used to completely tie all the (slightly) loose ends, and many people would've taken this whole ending much better. But we have what we have. And maybe that is another reason why most people gave it a rating of "7"?

The (modest) elephant in the room.
One of the bigger accusations I've seen towards Darling in the FranXX is that is heavily resembles Neon Genesis Evangelion sometimes. It's an opinion I don't particularly share, although it has some truth in it and there are reasons for that which I will bring up soon; but the fundamentals of DitF are so very different from those in Neon Genesis Evangelion. The characters, their relationships, the psychological coloring of the story, symbolism and target audience - there are so many differences, that when comparing them overall, it would be tough to consider them similar. Evangelion is a pretty sophisticated creation with a lot of theories and interpretation existing around it. Darling in the FranXX, however, is a simple and straightforward anime.
But as I said, it would be ignorant to just discard some similarities. The mechs have some resemblance in the way they are produced, Klaxosaurs have some bits of them that are akin to how Angels were in Eva, and probably some more tiny details that my mind can't recall enough from Neon Genesis Evangelion to put into this review. And one correlation could be considered a chance, but two (or more)? That raises questions and suspicion. However, there is a reason, and if you know anything about Gainax (studio that animated NGE) and Trigger (studio that animated Darling in the FranXX), you might already know the answer. And the answer is simple and disappointing. Trigger was formed by several former staff members of Gainax. If you'd take some time to browse through the staff members of DitF, you'll find several episode directors, key animators and storyboarders that worked on Evangelion in that list.
All in all, it seems strange to me that some may make a big focus on this particular "issue" of the show. Perhaps they have been disappointed by something else, but decided to blame the plagiarism as the main reason for their disappointment? Who knows. I think that the show has enough strong sides that are not based on any other particular anime to be littered on for this flaw.

Personal opinion. (mild spoilers!)
If you read this much of the review, it wouldn't be a secret that I liked Darling in the FranXX. The signs were there. Actually, the reason I decided to write this review is because I decided to rewatch it a few weeks ago. And I enjoyed it to the fullest. I found it very pleasant that Hiro was able to not only realize his dream of piloting a mecha, but also found a very important soulmate. Their chemistry is very sweet and casual, it's just nice to see it when romcoms and romances nowadays often strive for fetishes and specific niche traits (I'm looking at you, Horimiya). I didn't like the Futoshi/Mitsuru switcheroo, I don't really feel anything about Mitsuru and he seemed cocky for a good bit of the story, but he seemed to care about his partner, so I can let it go. The part that left the sourest taste is the Zero Two mecha in the end. It just feels unnecessary and weird, but so are a lot of things in that universe, so it's hard to argue.
The first time I watched this anime was back in 2019 IIRC, merely a year after it was released, and it happened to be in the first year of my being hooked on anime. It just so happens that sometimes when you rewatch an anime you watched long ago, your opinion on it changes, as you've had a pleasure to experience many more shows since then, but I'm really glad that my feelings about Darling in the FranXX only got reinforced.
I can't deny that some nostalgia might be skewing the objectivity of the review, but I tried to stick to simpler terms when describing aspects and distincting personal opinions as they are. And even though some parts of the anime might be percepted by some of you in less eulogizing ways, I still believe that you will be happy with this show and will treasure the emotions it will make you feel. I will certainly keep the memories of Darling in the FranXX in a special place in my head and will look forward to the opportunities to rewatch it with someone else.

The conclusion.
This show is not the most unique out there. It's not the most exciting out there. It's not the best in any way. But it combines a few simple concepts into one and executes them admirably, all while backing it up with a great sight for sore eyes. It is a very solid anime with high production quality. I gave it a rating of 9, but it's more like an 8 after you take all my personal biases from it. I highly recommend everyone to watch this show, but I might be 6 years too late to the party. Thanks to everyone who took their precious time to read through the ocean of thought mixed with emotions that I've organized in a span of several evenings. I wish you all to be happy in your life.

I don't think there are much anime about firefighters, so I decided to give Megumi no Daigo a chance. I wasn't ever really into firefighting (and Megumi no Daigo is not strictly about firefighting, it's actually about rescue), so I wasn't super excited about this anime, I just thought "huh, that sound pretty fun". This also wasn't a very anticipated, hyped-up anime and it still has a very modest number of users on MAL.

I haven't read the manga, nor have I watched the Kajiba no Baka Yarou prequel, so I was going in completely blank. And as with many small-budget anime, this one is a ... mixed bag. The characters are about what you would expect from a firefighting anime - several have fire-related trauma, there's some romance going on, and there are heroic figures with genius abilities. The story is also unremarkable, but there are some commentaries that explain some technical aspects of the job, which is educational and good.

What's not very good is execution. There are a few threads on MAL that discuss recaps. Recaps are not something uncommon, especially for a two-season shows like Megumi no Daigo. But usually it's just one recap in the middle of the season. Here, however, we have A LOT of them. There are episodes, from which you can remove OP and ED, as well as a recap, and you'll get about 10 minutes of new footage. It's quite confusing, because choosing to have 24-ish episodes and then stuffing them with recaps seems wasteful. If you don't have enough story to fill 24 episodes, you can do something akin to what creators of Hikari no Ou did and split the season into two short (9-10 episodes) parts that air in two sequential seasons. Other issue that rectifies the recap thing is uneven pacing. As some other reviewers mentioned, one episode can be filled with on-site action, and the other is just going to be flashbacks with very little story being delivered. On such episodes, I really wanted the episode to just end already.

But, despite these issues, I have positive opinion about this anime. In those rare occurrences, where we actually get to see the story, it was pretty cool. The last episode greatly contributed to my final score for this season, because it felt like we're finally done with all the introductions and what awaits us in the future seasons (if they will ever come to be) seems to be more action-packed and we'll see the whole "M Company" team assemble and kick the fire's ass! If you are searching for a good anime, I believe you could find a better candidate. But if you're searching for with an unusual theme - you might wanna give Megumi no Daigo a shot.

The second season comes to an end, taking nearly 9 months to finish. I imagine we will see more of this kind of delays down the line, because there's more and more new anime released each season, but there's only so many slots on the TV. A lot of people, for some reason, are very offended by shows being delayed, and are lowering the scores of such anime, which is something I cannot comprehend myself. How does a delay make a show better or worse?

Let's get back to The Misfit of Demon King Academy II though. This is a solid continuation of the first season, ... it mainly keeps the same pace in telling the story. Which is alright, however the pace was a bit faster than I would consider ideal even in the first season. As such, it's very easy to lose track of what's happening. One episode you're watching a revolt happening in the Academy, and a couple of episodes later the MC and his squad are taking a magic exam under the supervision of a talking tree. When the 7th episode aired after half a year of waiting, I found myself being lost, honestly. I didn't have solid memories of what happened in the past 6 episodes, only a vague image of it. Sticking to the "If you forgot, then it wasn't important" rule, usually I just proceed to finish the show and don't think much of it, because the show had 10+ episodes (usually) to catch my attention, and if it hadn't done so, the show is just not for me. But this wasn't the usual case with The Misfit of Demon King Academy. It was one of the very rare times, where I took my time to watch through the previous episodes once more, and I don't regret it a smallest bit. If anything, it made me like this show a bit more than before.

The story is pretty straightforward, just like in the first season. No fillers, no arcs, just one main storyline, which can't be taken for granted nowadays even for single-season 12 episode shows. There's nothing too complicated about it, although it's not as linear as most storylines are. In this season we get to peek at the events of the past, much like we did in the beginning of the first episode, but a little more broadly, as MC spends several episodes time-traveling to the past to uncover the events that happened between his reincarnations.

The art is pretty good, although there are some moments where the animation is subpar. But overall, there is anime with much worse animation. The key frames are well done, so it doesn't look like a low budget product.

One more thing that I've seen many people rant about is a different VA of Anos Voldigoad. And if those people liked the voice if the pervious VA more than the one from this season, it is somewhat justified. However, I believe that this is a change for the better, as Suzuki Tatsuhisa (VA from season 1) sounds cocky and less serious to me, while Umehara Yuuichirou's (VA from season 2) lower voice and slower speech seem to fit the Demon King better.

I couldn't decide if I want to give this show a 7 or an 8. Ideally, I would give it something like 7.7/10, but we only have integer scores on MAL and 7 feels a bit lower than this season deserves, so I decided on an 8. It's a pleasant watch, pleasant voice actors, and they added a goth version of Misa. If you watched and liked the first season, the second season will not disappoint you.